


Rid of The Monsters Inside Your Head

by JadeofRen



Category: Star Wars, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: And nobody is sure if she is good or evil, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, F/M, Forest Sex, Kira is a goddess, Love at first sight TWICE, Mature for faint mentions of suicide, Nobody Dies, Really good Rey, Rey is pretty good, Sith Code, The Force exist but as a...outlier, The Ones - Freeform, This is a really weird interpretation of King Again By Lauren Aquilina, Which I totally should have done but I didn't, Which he gets...kind of, angsty angst, like a million of them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-13 23:02:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21241520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JadeofRen/pseuds/JadeofRen
Summary: Eight months of traveling the world had taught Ben Solo  a few things:Never haggle with the indigenous when you were in indigenous territory.Always remember to bring bug spray when camping in the words.The currency exchange rate was not negotiable.The final thing he’d learned that the darkness he tried to escape had not disappeared. Not entirely. It laid in wait, for him to be comfortable, let his guard down.Voices, as he climbed the rocky footpath up the Juran Mountains, a place his grandfather used to pray, and where his mother and uncle often traveled to memorialize him. Compulsions, as he swam in the lakes of Varykino, where his grandparents married. The whispers along the mountains said ‘jump’, the voices in the soft churning waters said ‘drown.’He could not live like this. Could not live with the sweet kiss of peace to have it torn away from him.The flower of light within him was dying.





	Rid of The Monsters Inside Your Head

**Author's Note:**

> After watching Hotarubi no mori e without the ability to not SOB like a newborn babe, I found this video and...then this was written.

Ben was twenty when he first saw her.

Now, she was a memory, a faint one he could only see in bits and pieces of afterimages. A smile here, a frown there. The way she would look at him. Exasperated. Maybe fondness.

Back then, she was everything and Ben found everything within her.

At twenty he was…contemptuous, a stubborn man, a forlorn boy. It was strange. There were all of these emotions built up inside of him, feelings that had no beginning or end. It as if they’d always been with him, unannounced and uninvited. His parents, unfortunately, could identify a few, usually becoming a conjoined verbose thesaurus when ticking off all of his flaws in the upswell and downpours of another argument. They were angry with him. Disappointed. Heartbroken, maybe. Those emotions he could name.

But not the ones inside of him. The ones that speak to him, the haunt him.

Nameless or not, they are there, resting, and ruling, and abiding within him. And he cannot get rid of them. He cannot drown them out. He cannot choke them out. So, he tolerated them, a symbiotic parasitic coexistence. Side by side, as a husband and wife would, if uxoricide was your notion of romance.

And it hurt.

It was summer and the heat of the Chandrila countryside was almost as oppressive as the tension in the car. His mother gave him a look over her shoulder, her mouth opening to add something to her previous diatribe but closing it instead to turn in her seat and glare at the road instead. His father glanced at him in the rearview mirror but like his wife, decided not to say anything. At the moment.

The cause of all of this: Ben wanted to drop out of college. A gap year, but, say, in the middle of his junior year. He himself didn’t see what was so wrong with wanting to explore the world, see what life was like from up under the weight of being a senator’s first born, a world-famous pilot’s son, and the protégé of a civil rights activist.

Ben…did not disagree with his family’s plans for his life. He didn’t. What his mother did was important. What his father accomplished was important. What his uncle fought for was important. But he was twenty and for nineteen of those years he’d been molded under the pressures of their expectations. He was in their shadow, their legacy.

He wanted to be _him_. To be free. Just for one goddam year.

So, instead of joining Leia and Han in their summer home off Lake Andrasha and smiling at his Uncle like he wasn’t part of the problem, he dropped his things off, kissed Dosmit, the elderly household manager, on the cheek, and walked the well-worn path curving out from the back of the house like a ruddy brown tributary into the forest.

It was cooler under the shade of tintolive trees, the canopy overhead shielding him from the harsh rays that always seemed to burn him no matter how many layers of sunscreen he put on. Still, it was fucking hot. And…he was lost. A bizarre occurrence because Ben had practically grown up in these woods. There was a tree with his first girlfriend’s name carved into it exactly ninety-two steps from their back porch. The tire swing that had been the cause of his first broken bone the rope fraying and the tire worn and bloated from the elements, fifteen steps from that. He could walk this entire path blindfolded.

In the distance were the depilated ruins of an old temple, rooted deep in the ground and where green vines slithered from the soil and wrapped around their prey like snakes. Chunks of rheumy grey stone poked towards the sky at odd angles, like someone had dropped it from the sky and laughed as it fell to pieces.

Temples, mysterious ones that appeared out of nowhere, in woods Ben knew like he knew his own name, were cause for concern. Ben was a smart man, Ivy league scholar, a mental spitting image of Korin Pers and Chelli Lona Aphra. He believed the things his grandfather wrote in the journal he’d left Ben before he died, the chronicle on the _spirits_ that lived inside of them, inside every creature and plant and thing alive. There were even people, places, and things that collected these spirits, these midichlorians–magic some would say, the devil, others would.

His grandfather though different. “Deities, my boy. Gods and Goddesses.”

Goddesses have known to absolutely wreck shit for no reason So. No. He was not going to go inside of the temple, thank you. Gods and but–damn, it was hot and he was thirsty and there should be a stream nearby. Even if he’d fallen in some third dimension, the stream should still be there.

And it was. The water had been cool and as he collapsed to sitting in the shade, he took another look around the temple. It didn’t look that scary or that haunted. But there was one thing he heeded more than anything in this life, and it was his grandfather’s words. Anakin had never lied to him.

“It’s okay to be wary of things you don’t understand at first, Ben.”

Ben pulled his shirt off, sighing when what little breeze glanced across his sweat slicked chest, and stuffed it under his head. A nap would do him great right now. He felt so…sleepy, wrung out.

He would travel better with some rest, try to figure out these woods and get home. From outside of the temple.

Outside. That was safe enough.

When he opened his eyes, it was dark and shit, shit, _shit_. He’d been asleep for hours and Leia had probably contacted the damn national guard scour the woods. That is, if she could stop his father from heading out into the woods with Chewie, their hunting dog, and a loaded rifle.

This wasn’t the first time he’d stormed off, but it was the first time he’d done it and _stayed_ gone. The nap hadn’t made him suddenly unlost and even rested, he had no idea where he was. His cellphone had no coverage and was near dying. _Perfect_. _A perfect fuckup for the perfect fuckup._ Squinting, he tilted his head back in an attempt to read the stars like Han had taught him but the sky was concealed by a thick, impenetrable canopy of tintolives.

The despair didn’t kick in until his stomach rumbled, gurgling like if it didn’t alert Ben to their predicament, loudly, he would die. Soon.

_If you’re ever lost, grandson, retrace your steps. Find where you fell off the path. You’ll find it again if you go the way you came. _Grandpa called it “Unfalling.”

Sage words. Ones he would follow if there was a path. Because there was not one. Not anymore. The thicket of trees seemed to have grown, inching closer to him while he slept, surrounding the temple like a swarm of green and brown. Reaching for him, Closing in on him. Closer and closer and closer and–

_Ben…_

No. This isn’t real. This isn’t real. He was still dreaming and this isn’t–

He tore at a branch when it scrapped across his face and swallowed a scream as another wrapped around his ankle, tugging him deeper into a sharp ragged maw of evergreen. As scared as he was, because he _was_ scared, terrified there was something familiar about the aura of fear the forest produced, something intimate and horrifying. It felt like the same dynamism of unnamable feeling swirling around his soul. It felt conversant.

_“Come with us, Ben. Here. With us. You…can be free.” _His voice. His voice. That was _his_ voice. Usually, the whispers in his head sounded old, rusted with use, thick with phlegm. Heavy. Foreboding.

This voice was his, deep, warm, captivating. His. His. _His_.

He stared down at the branch around his ankle, the new tether around his wrist, and the bite of rough bark digging into his skin began to feel…soft, like a guiding light, a caress, beacon.

Would it be so bad? To get lost out here? Forever?

It felt so right. The call of towards oblivion, the earnest tempest of nothingness.

_“Yes, Ben. Don’t think, just...feel. The darkness is where you belong. It is what you are.”_

The feeling. It had a name. Darkdarkdarkdark_dark._

He could just…go. Surrender.

“Leave him be, Ninûshwodzakut.”

The leaves recoiled, flattened against the bark they sprouted from, but the branches hiss and spat and tightened their hold. “Kira,” the forest snarled.

“Leave him be,” the voice said again, diaphanous and soft. Ben looked over his shoulder, away from the darkness, and there was nothing but light, a halo of it, more inviting than the shadows had ever been. “He is _mine_.”

“No,” the forest roared. “No! It is my name he calls in his dreams and it is my love that soothes him.”

The halo of light softened to form first the silhouette of a woman, then continuing to recede until the ring of light morphed into a mask of flesh–lips, and brows, and a nose. Warm. Beautiful. She stepped away from the cavern of the temple, slow and easy, graceful in a way that seemed innate. The grass bent to cushion her steps while white roses and purple lilies danced from the earth to cover her nude body in a gown of flora.

“We’ve lived together peacefully, haven’t we, Ninûshwodzakut?” the woman cooed. “Your darkness and my light? I see the light in this boy. Therefore he is mine.”

“I see darkness as well! I see the night in him.”

“Be that it is, darkness rises, and light will always rise to meet it.”

The forest–Ninûshwodzakut–barked and sputtered its discontent. “He is–”

“Stubborn,” the woman spat. “You leave me no choice.”

Ben watched this conversation, this argument over him, his soul, as the spectator he was. He felt compelled by both–darkness as an ally, light as a savior and did not have the strength to lean to one side or the other. But it was the light that approached him, regal in her wonder and glory and beauty. It was the light who reached into the mangled mass of green, the branches slithering away at her simple touch. It was the light that pulled him into the darkness of the temple.

“Safe, Ben. You are safe now.”

Ben looked down into her face, her eyes as green as the forest she’d vanquished, and saw a light of a different sort. Kindness tempered with a power he could not understand. Beauty in the angles of her cheekbones, her lips, her eyes.

A white rose had weaved its way around her halo of light, a crown of earth and heaven. She plucked a petal from it and offered it to him. “Eat. Consume my light. Nurture it. Let it grow.”

He did as he told, placing the petal between his lips and swallowing it whole.

“Lovely,” she whispered before reaching up on her tiptoes to brush a kiss across his brow. “And mine.”

When he woke up, he was home. In bed. His mother was next to him, tucked into his favorite armchair chair, her body bent in half over his bed, and her arms cradling her head as she slept. There was a hint of grey at her temples, and although her face was soft with sleep, laugh lines had formed around her mouth. Ben thought of all the times she’d frowned at him in her dissatisfaction, but he also remembered the years and years of memories of her smiles.

“She was worried sick when you didn’t come back, kid.”

Standing in the doorway of the room was his father, who too was getting older. Too old to be arguing with him, too old to have to fix their faces to hide the hurt. He didn’t want to hurt them. He wanted them to understand.

“Got lost. And I…” Ben paused, looked around the room. “I found my way back.”

Han grunted, and there was something like understanding in his eyes.

“You’ve got too much of me in you. I was hoping you’d get all of her, but my luck is worth shit.”

“I got your nose.”

His father did something that Ben hadn’t heard him do in years, at least not with him. He laughed. “You did. It’s a great nose.” He tapped the side of it. “Your grandfather has strong genes. Both of them.”

What went unsaid spoke louder than words could ever. “_All who wander are not lost,” his grandfather told him once._ But Anakin did get lost. Lost to madness, to fear of losing Padme, to losing all he’d worked so hard to gain, to losing his children to the rumors. The only happy memory he’d left in his last years was Ben’s journal.

“I won’t get lost, Dad. I promise. I will make my way back. I just…I have to do this.”

“Yeah, kid. We know,” he sighed.

Eight months of traveling the world had taught Ben Solo a few things:

Never haggle with the indigenous when you were in indigenous territory.

Always remember to bring bug spray when camping in the words.

The currency exchange rate was not negotiable.

The final thing he’d learned that the darkness he tried to escape had not disappeared. Not entirely. It laid in wait, for him to be comfortable, let his guard down.

Voices, as he climbed the rocky footpath up the Juran Mountains, a place his grandfather used to pray, and where his mother and uncle often traveled to memorialize him. Compulsions, as he swam in the lakes of Varykino, where his grandparents married. The whispers along the mountains said ‘jump’, the voices in the soft churning waters said ‘drown.’

He could not live like this. Could not live with the sweet kiss of peace to have it torn away from him.

The flower of light within him was dying.

Of course, this talk about flowers was a metaphor. Ninûshwodzakut didn’t exist inside of him, and neither had Kira.

The realization it had all been a dream had echoed sadly in his chest. But dream or not, he had never, could never forget her face. The paltry light within him morphed her imaged into a deity of sort, pure and innocent, worthy of his praise. The darkness painted her as a usurper, a demoness who’d cast away the one thing that had been with him all his life–all-encompassing dread. But when light met dark, she was a friend. A lover and a savior all wrapped up in one, wrapped around him, and under him, and he inside of her, replicating her effect in the only way he knew how. How sweet she sounded when she whispered his name. How lovely he felt buried in her, with all her goodness and warmth and wetness.

Images of loving her were the only thing that drove the pain away.

The temple was still there, although how Ben had found it this time was a mystery he wasn’t about to examine. It didn’t matter how he’d found it as long as he found it.

Maybe it had called to him–sensing his inner turmoil, sensing the inky blackness that wished to consume him.

“Not the temple.”

Ben blinked, long and slow. He’d come here because he wanted to believe he’d been lying to himself. That she did exist and that she could save him once again. It wasn’t the first time his brain had twisted one thing into something wholly unrecognizable. And he was out of options. He was _desperate_.

She detached herself from a throne of rose vines and honeysuckle sitting in the shadows of the temple’s grand hall, and Ben did not turn his head as her nude form was slowly concealed once again with nature’s bounty.

She did not look like she minded or cared.

“I said, not the temple.”

He frowned, confused.

“I called you here. I’ve _been_ calling for you. This is the first time you’ve answered me.”

His frown deepened. “I’m…sorry. I–”

“Didn’t believe I was real?” She smiled, and Ben was convinced she was made of nothing light, and _stars_ how she calmed him. “I am but I am not what you think I am,” she answered. “Whatever pious thoughts you have of me, destroy them.” She nodded her head towards the temple. “Come. I want to show you something.”

As always, Ben obeyed.

Inside of the temple looked as horrible as the outside did and it was something he did not think someone like Kira should dwell in. It felt like him, ruined and decomposed and she did not deserve anything reminiscent of his pain. He would, if he could, destroy it and rebuild it, fortify it to keep the rain off her head, insulate it to keep her warm. Fill it, and her, with himself, to make her dwelling of shambles demolition into a home.

She led him further into the pitch-black blot of darkness, streams of light filtering in through a cracked roof. Ben looked up and saw nothing but the canopy of trees and wondered where the moonlight came from.

When they reached their destination, Kira stopped.

It was a bedroom.

In the center of the room was a mass of branches, twisted and bent in the shape of a rose, stem and all. It was several feet tall, and a bed of furs and flower petals hung precariously from the tip.

Oh. A _bed_. She’d led him to her bed.

“Not quite,” she said, again answering his thoughts. “I want you to have this.” Her gown parted, and Ben’s eyes widened. Hovering between her petite breasts was another white rose. She gestured with her hand and the rose floated over to Ben’s hands.

“Do you know why I chose you? Do you know why you’re in pain?”

“No,” he answered truthfully. “All I know is that it hurts, and I can’t make it stop.”

“I am a being of the Force. The light and dark of it. I was...born forth in preparation of a soul who has yet to discover me. You are her equal, and it is you who I have chosen for her. It is you.”

Her? _Who was this her_? “She doesn’t matter. Only you matter. Only you.”

“Amazing. Every word of what you just said... was wrong.”

It _wasn’t_. The only thing that did matter to Ben in this moment was her, and her ability to save him.

“Consume your petal, love, then return to me when your burden is too great.”

He swallowed it without hesitation, just as he had months ago. Immediately, the pain receded, and his body was enveloped by the warm light of her magic. “Can I come see you when I–” He hesitated, cleared his throat. “I want to see you again.

“You will. Continue your journey, Ben. I shall be here.”

And continue his journey he did. He traveled as far as he could go, knowing he was confined by his need to get back to the forest in Chandrila, where she would heal him. They did this for months, _years_. Ten long, sweet years. Ben eventually went to college, graduated, went to law school, and passed the bar.

He helped his mother draft bills that would feed the hungry. He traveled with his father to deliver supplies to war torn lands. He stood on the picket lines with his uncle, his screams of corruption, the loudest.

But he always returned.

In their years, he learned that despite Kira’s divinity, she, in her moments, acted very human. She had her likes and dislikes, things that vexed her, and things that made her happy. She would yell at him for silly things, like the one time he offered to buy her a home, and actual home. She began to understand his wry, witty sense of humor, often giggling herself mad when he said something factious and dry.

One visit, without thinking, he presented her a carving of a rosebud, and she’d cried for hours. It wasn’t until she composed herself, did she explain that she felt the tree’s pain, she felt the pain of the _world_, or what was left of it.

He never did anything like that again.

“You love me, don’t you?”

Ben was thirty now. Still contemptuous. Still stubborn. Still forlorn. But those feelings came because of his deposition, his personality, and the not from the bone-weary exhaustion it came from fighting his inner demons every day.

Kira sat on a small pallet of black rose petals and organdy, bent over as she cooed at a squirrel and fed him some of her wild nuts.

“Yes,” Ben said without hesitation. He didn’t look at her and continued bending a long piece of wire that would serve as a hook for his hammock. He loved visiting but sleeping on the floor–and never in her bed–was starting to get old. At least this way, when he woke up to find her gone, he wouldn’t have a backache to go along with the ache in his heart.

“Love…” she said, trailing off.

It was obvious that he loved her. She could read his thoughts, and she so often not bothering to get is permission. Not that she needed it. When he felt her poking along the soft fuzziness of his mind, he let her in. Let her see his adoration, his _devotion_, loyalty, and desire for her.

He found himself wanting to spend all his time in the forest with her, foraging for food she never ate, gathering water she never drank and building fires out of moss that never kept her warm. Sometimes, when she felt like touching him, she would let him nap on her lap, his head nestled between her thighs. And sometimes, only sometimes, right before sleep took him, he would feel her fingers in his hair, hear the melody of her lullaby in his ears.

He wanted her more than he wanted to live.

She laid the rest of the wild nuts in a heap for her squirrel and stood. “You shouldn’t. I cannot love you back. Not like this.” She said it so simply, like it was fact, and maybe it was, but it _hurt_. And he wanted to know why.

“Because you aren’t human?”

Kira laughed and the temple rumbled. “No. Because I cannot feel love. I was not created for it. I feel possession, authority, the right to rearrange things as I see fit. For her to find _you_, I manipulate your feelings. So that you will listen to me, keep coming to me. I help cure your pain so that you think I am your savior when everything I do is to prepare you for her. You do not love me. You do not know me.”

Her words were harsh, but Kira rarely said soft things. When she did, it wasn’t because she meant them to be soft. Everything was a blunt truth, scathing, filed down to the core essence of meaning.

“You’ve made me dependent on you,” he echoed.

“Yes.”

“And can’t you see that I am gladly and willingly addicted? You may be powerful, but you do not control my heart.” Ben felt anger and through that anger, the dark peeked its head up like a curious cat. Seeing its chance, it manifested and bloomed, like a Hellebore, it’s black petals snapping with rage and rejection. “I could destroy, you know. Snap every bone in your body. Choke the life out of you.”

Kira leaned forward, lips pressed against her thumb, patient, as if she were waiting out his latest tantrum. “Precisely, Benjamin. And you would destroy her if you do not learn that there is more to life than want. There is give. And you are too possessed by what you think the world owes you to consider it.”

Ben knew that she was wrong. Has not he not giving his life over to helping those in need? Again, he felt Kira dancing in his thoughts, but this time, he shut her out.

“You do the things you do because they are expected of you. You may believe that you are doing great things because you have the capacity for kindness at large. You’re _so_ close, Benjamin. I can almost taste the good in you. Don’t get distracted.”

Ben stood, looming, hovering over her. “I am _sick_ of your lessons. I am sick of your sanctimonious lectures.”

The darkness was swelling and instead of fighting it, which hurt so much, he accepted it, let it fester and burrow deep. “You don’t love me? You don’t want me? Fine. Then leave me alone. Disappear.”

Which…was unfair. She never came looking for him. She would call, yes, but it was he who ran.

Yet, instead of the indignant anger he deserved, she smiled. “As you wish.”

By the time he realized she wasn’t coming back, Ben was too feverish to travel back to his car. So, he wallowed inside the ingress of her room, on the floor, inhaling her fresh scent, begging to every god he could name that she would come back. Not just because of the pain–which was too great to acknowledge without screaming–but because he hadn’t meant what he’d said.

He did not want her to disappear.

What if she never came back?

_“Then you live with your decisions, Ben,” the forest slurred._

It had been talking to him for hours and no matter how hard he clamped his hands over his ears, he could not drown it out.

“Please,” he whimpered. “Please leave me alone.”

“You _are_ alone. Aren’t you tired of it, Benjamin? Doesn’t the taste of loneliness bore you yet?”

“No, no, no,” Ben pleaded. He scrambled back into the shadows of Kira’s room and repeated the poem Kira taught him over and over, trying to repress the darkness out. “Emotion, yet peace. Ignorance, yet knowledge. Passion, yet serenity. Chaos, yet harmony. Death, yet the Force.”

He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to be consumed by pain again.

_“I can help you, Benjamin.”_

“No, no, no! No, you can’t!”

There was a flash of light, astounding and beautiful and Kira reappeared before him, her features flashing with anger. She stared down at Ben for a moment, before whirling on the forest.

“How many times must I tell you that he is mine?” Her voice carried across the air, amplified and so thunderous the ground shook.

With her light, the fever subsided. Ben eased himself up to sitting up and stared at the deity in all of her magnificence. She was good. She was good. She was _so_ good.

And he was sorry. Sorry that he told her to go. Sorry that he angered her.

_“You cannot keep dominion over which you have abandoned, Ror'jahn! Sithspawn! Seductress! Let him choose! Ajak! Ajak! You must follow the will of Qyâsik,” the forest screamed._

The delicate line of Kira’s shoulder rose and fell as if she were breathing hard. Impossible. She did not breathe. She did not need to. She turned her head, verdant eyes falling on him. “Benjamin,” she called softly.

He rose, confused, afraid, enraptured. “Yes?”

“It is correct. I have been shielding you to your own detriment. You…” she looked back out towards Ninûshwodzakut. “I cannot help you if you do not choose.”

“I chose you, then.”

She turned, facing him, and he noticed the light around her flower hewed halo had dimmed. Ben inhaled sharply when her delicate, cool hand came to caress his cheek. “I know. But it is not me you have to convince. It is not the dark you have to persuade. It is the darkness in you. Ninûshwodzakut knows that. You must declare to it or it will never leave you alone.”

“No.” Ben shook his head. “No. I’ll just stay here. I don’t need anything else. I don’t need to leave, declare anything. I just–let me be here. With you. Forever.”

“It hurts doesn’t it?”

Ben squeezed his eyes shut instead of answering her.

“You were not meant to be mine for eternity, child. And you cannot grow if I keep replenishing what’s light in you. You must do it for yourself. Declare. She is waiting and you need to be balanced.”

“Her again! I don’t–” He went to grab her hands, but he grabbed at nothing. There was a rush of darkness and he was abandoned to the wildness of wilderness, again. The forest before him grew, darkness amassing with the turbulent thrashing of branches and leaves.

_“She abandoned you, again,” Ninûshwodzakut spat._

“Stay away from me.”

_“It hurts, doesn’t it?” the forest said, a sad, nefarious echo of Kira’s words. “It because there is too much light in you, my love. And I shall destroy it in you. The light stains you. Eyah seh maat, shu kor huaan.”_

Ben took a step back but the branches began to encircle him, some drawing back like the vipers waiting to strike, wood and bark snapping into sharp points.

_“Peace is a lie, Benjamin, Rhak-skuri. There is only passion. Through passion, I will give you strength. Through strength, I will give you power. Power will lead to victory. And then you shall be free.”_

“No,” he whimpered. “I chose her.”

_“Do you?” Ninûshwodzakut crooned. “Ah, you do.” Leaves began raining down on him. At first it startled him, but it was gentle, loving. “I can love you, as she does. Did you know that? Except with my love, I will never leave you.”_

Ben frowned. “What do you mean?”

_“Didn’t that hellwhore tell you? That if you chose the light…you will never see her again?”_

The branches parted like petals blossoming to reveal Kira standing on the outskirts of Ninûshwodzakut’s province. She stood there, holding a rose tip in the palm of her hands. This one was gold.

“Do not listen. And do not be afraid,” she said, coming to his side. Kira looked up at him. “Do you chose the light?”

“I chose you,” he said, stubborn.

Her brow furrowed, maybe annoyed, maybe frustrated. “You must choose, Ben. _Vexok savaka. _Trust me. If you do choose the light, then I will be with you… always.” She held up her golden rose. “Take it. Consume it whole and choose.”

He trusted her, he had to trust her. He wanted to please her but more than that he wanted the pain to go, for voices that sounded so much like his to leave him alone.

This rose, unlike the others, melted into a silky golden elixir the moment it touched his lips. He felt it flow into him, settle into his belly before blossoming out, petals of power taking him over.

He collapsed to his knees, the roar of Ninûshwodzakut’s in the background. She joined him soon and he looked up, wanting to see her lovely face, but–

“Kira?”

She laughed, although her lips and teeth were black, stained by a thick viscous element seeped from her mouth. “My name is not Kira. I have–have no name. I…stole her face, her image,” she paused to collapse further, now sprawled out, her legs in odd angles under her. “I needed you to trust me. To want me.’

“I–I–don’t understand.” He reached out to cradle her face in his hand and pieces…of it flaked off in his palm. He recoiled on instinct, horrified as her face crumbled and cracked before floating off in the current of air.

She was beautiful. She was still _so_ beautiful. Beautiful green hair, now slowly turning grey. Sharp emerald eyes, the same as his Kira’s but…but…this was not the face that he loved. This was not the face that he knew.

That didn’t matter now. She had helped him. She had shielded him. He owed her his loyalty. “How can I help you?” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw tendrils greying green hair float past him. Ben touched his forehead to hers and closed his eyes, too afraid of what he was seeing. “Tell me. _Please_.”

“There is nothing. Just because this form is destroyed does not mean I am. This was destiny, Benjamin. I chose you for her. So that she wouldn’t be alone anymore. So that you…wouldn’t be alone anymore. To give you that…that chance, I had to cast this weight off. I have to be able to fight Ninûshwodzakut’s as a being of darkness.”

“I don’t want you to go. You promised me,” he said, his voice breaking. He was crying, he knew he was. It wasn’t an action he was familiar with, more used to yelling or punching or throwing things. But he couldn’t stop.

She touched his chest, her hand over his heart. “I _will_ always be with you. But so will the darkness, Ben. It’s supposed to be there. Balance. But you can reign over your own soul–you’re in control. Reclaim it. Be rid of the monsters inside of you and be king over your domain, again.” She was disappearing now–no, disintegrating–into white petals of bright light. “But now, you must leave this place.”

“No,” he shook his head. “No, no. I won’t leave you, not like this.”

She smiled ruefully with lips he did not recognize. “Such a hardheaded child. Always….so…hardheaded.” With the last of her power–he knew because he felt it inside of his chest–she flung her arm out, and him, out of the forest.

When he came to, he wasn’t in his old bed like the first time he’d lost his mind in the forest. No, he’d never been to this place before. Small and cool, and painted a deep forest green.

A cot. He was laying on a cot.

Why was he laying on a cot?

“Oh! You’re awake!”

Ben looked up through the heavy shadows and faint illumination brought by a string of Christmas lights nailed to the ceiling. On a mantle above an unlit fireplace was a handful of lanterns. There, standing by a kitchen nook, was… a woman. She was dressed for hiking–a pair of joggers and an insulated windbreaker. Worn brown leather boots. In the corner, a trail backpack stuffed to the brim with…things. Her hair was pulled back into three buns, an odd look, definitely not Chandrilian fashion.

“Thank God,” she breathed, drawing closer, a plate of food in her hand.

She displaced the air when she moved, and Ben inhaled like a feral wolf smelling out a threat. No. No threat. Not yet. But she smelled like…

Ben blinked.

She smelled like she looked. Rosewater, magnolias and amber.

“I thought you’d died for a minute there and wow, I’ve never been around someone dead but boy did you look dead!” There was a drawn out moment of hesitation, of absolute quiet in the cabin. Then her mouth dropped open like her words were catching up to her in slow motion. The mortification colored the tips of her ears red. “I’m–shit–I’m sorry! I ramble when I get nervous.” She placed the plate down beside another one covered in tin foil and approached the cot.

“I make you nervous?” Ben asked, his fingers trying to rub the sleepiness from his eyes.

The woman paused. “_You_ don’t make me nervous. I just am. Sometimes.”

She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, her small face captured in youth like it was carved out of eternal stone. He stared at her and eventually, she stared back. “Are you okay? You were pretty out of it when I found you. I mean, like I said. You looked dead. Your fever broke last night, thank goodness but when you didn’t wake up, I got worried.”

Ben sat up, and as the thin, musty sheet she had covered him in fell to his lap, he realized was shirtless. The woman quickly adverted her eyes. A weird reaction since she was the one who must have undressed him.

“Your shirt was soaked through,” she stammered. “I washed it.” She glanced outside. “Should be dry.”

“Where–?” The sound came out rough, like rocks on a paved road, so he cleared his throat. “Where am I?”

“Ranger station on the other side of Lake Andrasha. Was, anyways. I, um, come here a lot. It keeps me company…in a way.” She mimicked his action and cleared her throat. “I didn’t think anyone would be out here. I usually have the place to myself. This side of the woods is empty. Alone!” she said cheerfully but no amount of cheer could hide the hurt he heard in the world _alone_. “I’m glad I did. I usually don’t…” She gestured in his direction.

“So, you’re–” And Ben knew it was a stupid question before he even got it out. “You’re not Kira.”

“Kira?” The woman laughed, a melodic, pretty laugh. “You must have bumped your head pretty hard. I know I helped you and all but that’s like asking me if I’m X'us'R'iia.”

A deep line formed between his brows. “What?”

“Well…Kira’s a myth. An urban legend. A goddess that protects the woods.” She paused and scratched her chin. “Or protects people from the woods? You’ve never heard of Kira and Ninûshwodzakut?

No, he’d never heard of it. His parents were too busy trying to save the world to read him bedtime stories. “No, I haven’t.”

“Oh,” and she wrinkled her nose as she thought, and Ben, despite his confusion and the lingering ache throughout his entire body–well, he thought it was adorable.

The only thing that would wrinkle on Kira was her brow and it was always when she was upset with him.

The same Kira who’s face belonged to this woman.

“Scary story, really, something they tell kids so they don’t wander in the woods. Never know if she’ll find you worthy enough to show up and save your ass.”

Sounded fanciful. And Ben contemplated if she–Kira–had found him worthy or not. She did lie to him. For years. “What’s the myth?”

The woman leaned against the back of the loveseat in front of the fireplace. “So, they say that there is this…thing. The Force…field? The Force–something and it lives in all of us. Like atoms but smaller, I guess. Well, they–The Daughter, The Son, and The Father–represent both sides of it and a balance, respectfully. Dark and light, grey. Good and evil and existence. Except,” and she popped the top on a beer that she’d snatched off the counter, “that The Daughter gobbled up her father and became Kira, a being who possesses light, but was not devoid of dark.”

_Kira, a being of light and dark…_

“She wishes to consume her brother as well but first she must choose which part of her she will cast off to fight him properly. She either needs to cast off light and become darkness to fight him. Or discard her darkness, in which her light will destroy them both. Part of me–that’s what brings me out here. Thinking that she was successful and now she’s alone. No family. No friends.” The woman took a slow swig. “I don’t think anyone should be alone,” she murmured.

“No,” Ben said, a deep throb of emptiness settling amongst the rose gold in his chest. “No one should be alone.”

“Legend say that when she is ready to make that decision, she chooses someone lacking the thing that she wishes to cast off and feeds it to them. Then she disappears for a few eons, only to do it all again. Never loving, never dying, just giving and taking.”

Ben's throat was dry. “Oh.” He stood, quicker than he should have, and a wave a dizziness hit him. His butt hit the cot, but because he was stubborn, he tried again, successfully getting to his feet. The room spun and he shook his head to clear it.

“Hey, buddy,” she said, standing and reaching out for him. “Take it easy. You just woke up from a–”

He pushed past the woman, fumbling through the small cottage and towards the door. Ben stumbled down the steps the woman had made out of halved logs, his knees hitting soft dirt and layers of tintolive leaves. He looked out into the forest, his eyes automatically searching for where her temple would be–_just over there, by the stream. He’d finally memorized the exact location four years ago_–but there was nothing but a clearing, a picnic table, and a ranger station signed hanging on by one bolt. Just a clearing. He bent over, hand braced against the side of the cottage as he dry-heaved, sick to his stomach with the realization that–that…

She was gone.

Kira was truly, _truly_ gone.

Ben’s stomach lurched again, and he wished and he hacked up nothing and he prayed and he coughed and begged–and nothing.

There was nothing he could do. He’d been used, he’d been protected, he’d been lied to, he’d been kept, he’d been manipulated, he’d been savedsaved_saved_.

When the woman rushed out the door to find him, he looked up, and saw her face, _Kira’s face_, and he couldn’t contain all the things that he felt. He had nothing but raw, virulent, unspent emotion and he had to get rid of it. Get the heaviness he felt, the sorrow engraved into his marrow _out–of–him_.

Desperate, he wrapped his arms around her hips, buried his face against her belly, inhaled the scent that had stayed with him for ten years, and broke _apart_. They were violent sobs, wholly unrepentant of embarrassment or propriety, or the fact that he, a stranger, was grabbing onto her like the mere thought of letting go would plunge him back in the darkness he’d just escaped.

She didn’t push him away like he expected her to, clutching to her in his grief. Instead, he felt a hesitant but light hand fall to the crown of his head. She was still for a moment, then–then…

It was gentle the way she cared for him, carding her hands through his hair, and rubbing the top of his ears, and humming softly above him.

“It’s okay. It’ll _be_ okay. Whatever it is, it’ll be okay. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

It was an empty promise but exactly what he needed right at that moment. So, he cried until he was empty. When he was dry, wrung out, crumpled, he looked back up at her, expecting to find a lot of things–pity, veiled revulsion, judgment. He found none of that.

“What’s–what’s your name?” he asked in a voice that was waterlogged.

She looked down at him, with those green eyes, and that face. Her smile was as hesitant as her first act to console him, but it came, slowly, like the coming dawn. “Rey,” she said, brushing away his tears with her thumb. “My name is Rey.”

Rey fed him, pulling off the aluminum foil from the plate he’d seen earlier. It was roasted tintolive nuts and some kind of jerky that took forever to chew. As he ate, she began lining bottles of water on his fold-out tray, one after another until they brushed up against his plate.

When he raised a brow at her, she said. “I,” then a pause, her bottom lip working back and forth as she thought. “When I’ve had a good cry, I always restock.” She nodded towards the water.

Ben didn’t complain. Just drank as she asked.

Could he have left? Yes. Sure. Now that the apparent alternative realm wasn’t dwelling in the middle of the forest, he could see his parent’s house off in the distance, their lot sitting atop a winding hill that led to the main road. His car was parked there. Maybe an hour's walk. Two, if he took his time. But…in the hours that had passed and in the hours that would come, Ben found that he didn’t want to leave Rey’s cabin, didn’t want to leave her. Nor does Rey seemed too inclined to kick him out.

The grief he felt was still in his chest, but as the minutes ticked by, it became muted, like someone was laying down wax over his memories, over his pain. In his mind, a face kept appearing, and it would pluck at a string of melancholy, but then he would look to his side, and see that same face–Rey’s face– trembling as she tried to keep a straight face during their drinking game.

The sadness abated.

Drinking–obviously a mistake–burned less the more he drank. He was never a big drinker but when Rey pulled out an old dust covered bottle of Chandrilian rum, he would have been stupid to turn it down.

The dark liquid, amber, helped loosened their lips, where they talked, and talked, and talked like they hadn’t been complete strangers up until a few hours ago.

Rey, orphan, and Ben, lost boy, traded stories over shots.

At some point, it became less an anticipating of what wild story she would tell next–like how she and her foster brother, Finn, were so hungry one night, they decided to hold up the small market near their house. But all they had was a banana and slipshod masks. The clerk recognized them and gave them some almost stale bread to eat from the back, asking, “Why didn’t you eat the banana?”–and more anticipating of what she was going to ask him. He knew she would, she seemed like that kind of soul. Seeking out hurt to heal while concealing her own. And sometime after midnight, she did.

“Why were you crying?”

He lowered her “Jakku is the pits” shot glass slowly. “I, um–” He fell silent, lips not moving, throat not working.

Rey put her hands up, uncoordinated as her finger came dangerously close to her eye every time she waved them back and forth. “No, no. I’m sorry. You _don’t_ have to answer that. I–I shouldn’t have asked that.” She whined and he blamed the liquor. “I’m made it weird. We were doing so well, and I made it weird.”

“No,” he grabbed her hand, because if she kept failing it around, she _would_ put her eye out. “No, it’s not weird. I want to tell you, I do. I just…can’t remember all of it. Any of it.”

“Oh.” She tilted her head it reminded him of a squirrel who would eat tintolive nuts out of a…a hand. A soft, warm hand. “How do you forget something that made you so sad?”

“I don’t know,” he murmured. “But I feel…I feel like I should remember. That…it was important. To me.” And it was. It felt significant, monumental. That something huge had been taken from him, but in return, something priceless, sacred, and eternal, had be given to him. “And I want to feel sad–I _am_ sad…” Hesitantly, he laced their fingers together. Rey did not pull her hand away, so he kept it there. “But when I look at you, I’m not anymore. And _scares_ me.”

Rey bit her lip, glancing between him, his eyes, and their hands. “Don't be afraid,” she said softly. “I feel it, too. When I found you, I mean I’m not a heartless person, but you looked…”

“Dead?” Ben said with a laugh.

“Yeah. More like dead drunk. And my foster father was a drunk and I–I was going to leave you. I dropped a bottle of water by your head and everything. But as soon as I got close…I felt it.”

“It.” And Ben knew what she was talking about before she even said it.

“You. I felt _you_. And.” She paused again to breathe in a lungful of air. “And you–I felt as if I know you. I’ve never met you before. Have I?

Ben shook his head. They were truly strangers. Not anymore, at least, but they had been.

She was silent after that. Ben waited a beat, then squeezed her hand. The gesture could have been anything–an “I understand”, “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about but keep talking because silence feels horrible right now”, “You’re absolutely bantha shit”–but it was none of those things. Warm. And it was there, he could see it, could tell what that unnamed longing was in her eyes. Because he knew the same reflected in his.

“You’re not alone.”

The words came from a place deep inside of him. Ben knew that they were the right thing to say, that he meant them. That she could be, would be, if she would let him, something…special to him.

And Ben wanted to touch her. To make sure she was real. But Ben was also dealing with the fact that his newborn fascination with her would come at a cost, that it was easy for him to lose himself inside of love. He felt as if there was a lesson here. It felt like a bad idea, as his eyes darted to her lips, the lust he felt deep in his gut, the way she mirrored his actions. But it all faded to dust the moment their lips touched.

_“You are her equal, and it is you who I have chosen for her. It is you.”_

It went from attraction to kismetic to outright visceral in _seconds_. Him, hovering over him, trying to inhale her, consume her, that maybe if he pulled her closer into him, she would never leave. Rey scrabbled at his shoulder, wrapped her hands around his neck and the kiss was so deep that Ben was sure they swapped molecules and protons and all the infinitesimal things that made him, him, and her, her.

“Ben,” she breathed. He didn’t remember telling her his name, but it felt so, so right falling from her lips.

They were rushing, like if they didn’t fuck _right that instant_, they would combust. But Ben would rather combust than not do right by her, to hear her pant and hiss, to feel her fingers clawing at his back. One hand was down her joggers on the next inhale, and she was sweet and warm and slick. The other, under her shirt, under her bra, huge palm against a pebbling nipple. Ben coaxed more wetness from her, listening for cues on what he was doing right and wrong. There was more right than anything else because her moans turned into desperate whimpers, and her pupils dilated, a thin ring of green against a dark void, soaking as much of him in as she could.

“Fall apart,” he murmured in her ear. “Fall apart and I will catch you.”

She nodded as if he had commanded her to do so, and he felt her pulse and contract around his fingers, against his palm.

“Good girl,” he said, kissing her brow. “My good, good girl.”

He wrapped her up in his arms and laid down on the couch holding her to his chest.

Rey looked up, face flushed, sweat beading up across her brow. “What–” and she looked down as if she could see through their bodies to where his stubborn erection pressed against her.

“Sleep.” He kissed her brow. “I want to learn what it is like to _just_ give. Later, I’ll give you another one, and another one, and another one, until you can’t stand it. I want to give you a million of those. I want to give you _everything_,” he breathed.

And he meant it. A house. And kids. And a family. And enough food in the pantry that she’d never ever have to think of playing stick up kid for a few snacks again.

“Are you going to deny me giving back in your quest for altruism?” She was teasing him, and Ben didn’t want to let her know how close to home she’d struck.

Ben, crazed, infatuated, shook his head. “I want to take you to my house. To a–to a real bed. Um, Maz might be there. She’d like you.”

Rey, shy, equally infatuated by the look in her eyes, nods. “Okay.”

And Ben felt the last vestiges of his mysterious sadness float away. His chest was warm, light, his heart fluttering like rose petals in the wind.

He understood nothing about this but his grandfather had told him about this once.

And Ben, always listened to his grandfather.

_“These feelings, they come and go. Hormones and shit. But sometimes it is more. Ain’t nothing magical about it, either. It’s a pure and simple connection in The Force. Your equal, you know? And you’ll know it, within seconds, minutes. And listen to me, Ben. When you find it, don’t ever let it go_.”

The groundskeeper, recently hired, looked at the temple with something akin to revulsion. It was decrepit looking thing, hidden deep within the forest surrounding Lake Andrasha.

Ben was filled with an awed kind of reverence, a contrast to the groundskeeper. He knew nothing of this temple. Just that looking at it made him feel good. Right. That some ancient, primordial thing, _spirit_, entity rested on these grounds.

“I’m not going to argue with a senator’s son,” the groundkeeper said, scratching at his scruff, “but if you say it’s going to be a landmark…”

His wife joined him at his side, her belly round, the fabric of her dress pulled tight over it. “How did you convince your mother to do such a thing?”

“I told her it,” and Ben took Rey’s hand, bringing her soft knuckles to his lips. “That it was what helped me find my way home.”


End file.
